with the weather so nice, the past 2 days i've done a lot of naturing and taken almost 4000 photos as a result. i'm still in the process of sorting through them all, so content will be up as soon as i can get organized. tomorrow looks to be a rainy day so i won't be going anywhere, the perfect opportunity to work on some missed entries.

i woke up at 8:00 this morning to see john off. he was driving to his boston conference so afterwards he can just head back to new york from there. we had a brief moment of terror when john couldn't find his car keys (worst case scenario: he dropped them somewhere in boston last night) but later found them in a jacket pocket. after he left, i went back to the kitchen looking for some breakfast. in the fridge was john's turkey on wheat sandwich from sunday that he wanted to throw away. never to let suspect food go to waste, i ate it after smearing some honey mustard. after an hour with no noticeable side effect, i figured it was safe enough to go out.

on this second and last day of good weather (with temperature in the 70's and sunshine for a change), there would be no doubt that i'd be naturing again. the hard part was picking the place. since it was still early, i could've gone someplace farther, but ended up finding a reservation in wayland again, not too far from hamlen woods, the place i went yesterday.

i went to the garden first, to inspect my vegetables after nearly a week of neglect. 2 of the peas had grown so tall without any proper support that the stalks collapsed on themselves. the lesson to learn here is peas (and beans) like to climb, and without the proper trellis structure, they won't grow well. the pride of my garden takes a downward tumble. hopefully some of the secondary vines can take up the slack of the broken central stalk. i ran into helen, a garden regular, and her friend jen, who apparently is the central coordinator for all of cambridge community gardens. when they left jen handed up some strawberries she'd picked.

the mental shorthand to get to greenways is 20-27-green way. route 20 cuts through the commercial heart of waltham and it's not a fun road because of alternating left-only and right-only lanes. basically you're always lane changing if you're trying to go straight so it can be a little nerve-wrecking. once beyond the commercial district, it does get better, and route 20 becomes boston post road, one of the original mail delivery routes between boston and new york starting in the 17th century. route 20 is also a coast-to-coast US highway, and if one were to follow it all the way to the end, one would end up in oregon. there was a distracting cloud rainbow in the sky during the whole ride.

at the end of green way lies an empty parking lot and the entrance to greenways reservation. while preparing myself for the forest (bug spray, GPS reading), a large red SUV pulled up besides me. a woman at the steering wheel asked me, "you're not afraid of dogs, are you?" before i could even say no, 4 large canines (each a different breed) jumped out of the vehicle. her partner, also an obese white woman like herself, came bouncing around the other side. they might be professional dogwalkers using the reservation as a dog park, which according to the rules this is a no no, but even worse, one of the woman lit a cigarette before walking into the woods. keep it classy, you guys.

the 87 acres greenways reservation is just a little bit bigger than the hamlen reservation i went to yesterday. while hamlen was dominated by abandoned reservoirs along side a granite hill (at least the parts i was at), greenways' topography is mainly flat, populated in equal parts by forest, wetland, and open fields. the sudbury river snakes along the western edge of the property and a golf course borders the north. a long wooden bridge crosses an almost magical area of shady wetland covered in pink and blue forget-me-nots. a few picnic tables dot the landscape and the riverbank could be a launching area for canoes and kayaks. there is also a pet cemetery where 2 dozen gravestones mark the passing of beloved pets, mostly dogs, one chimpanzee (or some kind of long-lived monkey). not everything is perfect though: coming into the reservation, the trails are littered with dog excrement in various states of decomposition. and the poison ivy! never once i was able to let my guard down from accidently stepping on or touching some poison ivy. and i shouldn't have to mention the mosquitoes because of all the wetlands, but i pretty much had these blood sucking satellites follow me the whole i'm i was in the woods (they were gone when i was out in the sunny open fields). one of them even managed to bite me through my jeans when i was squatting to take a photo.

as for fernspotting, nothing new. the 4 most common ferns (at least for wayland) are cinammon, hay-scented, royal, and sensitive. flowers:

insects:

coming back i stopped by my parents' place in belmont to let out hailey and to water the vegetables. i ended up accidently locking myself out of the house and had to call my father to come home from the cafe to let me back inside.

i went to market basket briefly to get an onion and some bananas. around 4:30, the supermarket was relatively empty. i finally managed to use the ground beef i bought last week, made a meat sauce for my spaghetti, sprinkled with some parmesan cheese. i watched grandma's boy on FX, a quirky little comedy.